So it's Saturday morning, and I'm up to write a blog post because I am going to try to stay consistent on this one, only no immediately pending questions, because this blog hasn't existed a week yet. It happens. Let's call this a Saturday Morning Ramble... whatever I want to write about. Maybe it'll become a thing.
And I think I want it to be about Wonder Woman.
Over the past decade or so I have been completely fascinated by the process of taking comic book characters and delivering them on the big screen. Before then, of course, I still enjoyed the movies made by DC and Marvel, they caught my imagination. I even enjoyed outings that history tells me I should have disliked. I liked Batman and Robin, and for awhile there would have consistently told you that my favorite Comic Book movie was Batman Forever. Because it was FUN, darn it, and that was what I was in it for.
For this past decade, though, I have been paying closer attention, still enjoying the movies but starting to wonder more about what they mean. I love the big deal that Captain America: The First Avenger, made about Steve Rogers being just another guy. I was haunted and thrilled by Heath Ledger's Joker.
I think that is why I was so disappointed in Green Lantern and Superman. As a kid, I might have LOVED them... but those characters are supposed to mean something. Ryan Reynolds was a horrible decision for Hal Jordan (a truly disappointing choice, really, given Nathan Fillion was a layup just waiting to happen and would have worked physically as well) and the dark broody route did not fit Superman. We needed the Big Blue Boy Scout. We didn't get him. So what we got was a guy with powers and issues. Still made for some interesting plot, but the movie will be forgotten just like Superman Returns was, and like the original Superman, starring Christopher Reeve, will never be.
I always knew that Diana (Wonder Woman, for those not on a first name basis with her) would get a movie eventually. She's a part of the DC Trinity, and even has some pop culture cred from her 70's TV show. Someone was always going to make the attempt... even if it would be (discouragingly) as a cameo in someone else's movie.
But after Dawn of Justice, someone will have to give her her own vehicle and franchise. I hope to God they get it right, and not just because of the fanboy in me that thinks that she could be brilliant and the movie would be great.
Because if they get it right, if they show us a movie about what Diana means, it would be a message Hollywood needs a lot more of right now. A Wonder Woman movie that got it right would show us a flawed woman, scarcely matured past being a girl, seeing a male dominated world for the first time. Her outsiders perspective would be like Captain America's in Winter Soldier, capable of honest critique, seeing the things everyone else just accepts and wondering why.
And then she could DO something about it. Forces would try to stop her and then get crushed, because she's effing Wonder Woman, who has gone toe to toe with Superman and stood her own. She would do it with strength, brilliance, and also that inherent goodness that she shares with Superman and Captain America.
Of course, that would require her to ACTUALLY be a superpowered Amazon from a Paradise Island named Themyscira ruled by women for millennia. I'm not sure we can trust Warner Bros. to deliver that, these days. They need to believe her, like they didn't in Green Lantern or Superman. Warner (I feel it is unfair to blame DC too much for their movies, as Warner has made clear in interview after interview that they view DC as a property, rather than a valuable arm or asset) doesn't really believe in anything outside of box office numbers and focus tested, corporate driven money makers.
But if they believed, they could recapture the magic that allowed them to get out of Harry Potter's way and make something great. I honestly believe that. I hope it happens. I hope they learn that the reason Disney is making huge money on the Avengers isn't a creative formula, but rather a simple premise: believe that the characters you have created are interesting enough to stand on their own.
Diana is a character I want to see done well, and a character that young girls DESERVE to see done well. They deserve a hero who allows them to be the hero, a WOMAN that stands proud among, and against, the other. So far, they have Black Widow. Not bad, really, but Diana would be better.
Unless the make her a superpowered damsel in distress. In which case I might start burning things.
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